Review of Terayama Shūji’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

Abstract: If the ideal director for Terayama Shūji’s plays exists, Kim Sujin is surely it. As protégé to Terayama (also to Kara Jūrō) and legitimate heir of their breakthrough approaches to staging plays in Japan from the 1960s on, Kim weaves Terayama’s multiple tropes seamlessly into the production here under review, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle . Among Terayama’s final efforts before his untimely 1983 death, it has not been abundantly staged. Yet, this work, with international appeal sourced in a French myth, is a fine, modernist play and especially good to parse, crystallizing many of Terayama’s fascinating stage theories. Kim’s work as director serves his mentor well.